


If He Had Any Other Choice

by elle_stone



Category: Rent - Larson
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Non chronological timeline, Non graphic depictions of violence, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-01-06
Updated: 2007-01-06
Packaged: 2017-11-06 14:03:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/419703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elle_stone/pseuds/elle_stone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No one changes this quickly, this suddenly, this completely, and he knows its.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If He Had Any Other Choice

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for challenge number 288, to write a fic for another community member, on the speed_rent community on livejournal. I wrote for lexaprose, who requested a "ridiculously angsty" Mark/Roger fic, "in which one copes with something bad happening to him" and the other finds out, and eventually, after possibly becoming angry, comforts the first. Also to include Collins.

**Roger, February 20, 11:22 PM**

 

Some nights, he plays in clubs like these: back-alley bars; crowded with laughing, crying, shrieking shadows; loud and sullen both; tinged with insanity in the smiles and the eyes of the patrons that he pushes by to get to the stage. He is lucky if he can hear himself sing, if he can catch the stumbling backbeat of the drums and the bass behind him. And he wouldn’t come here, he wouldn’t, if he had any other choice. If anywhere else would book them. If rent was free, and food, and heat. If, if, if.

 

 

**Mark, February 20, 11:25 PM**

 

He finishes his eighth cup of coffee, lights his fifth candle, spreads out the exactly sixteen and a half pages of his screenplay on the floor. The loft is cold, stuck in that last deep winter chill of the season, and empty, deserted, filled with the creaky sounds of old buildings. Two and a half hours ago, Roger invited him out. He had declined, wonders now if he regrets the decision, watches one of his candles splutter and go out. There aren’t any more matches.

 

 

**Roger, February 20, 11:50 PM**

 

The girl at the bar is drunk, but she tells him that she likes his voice, and he smiles, accepts her offer of a lighter and her last cigarette. 

 

These women are never really beautiful, but in the hazy light, it’s always so hard for him to tell.

 

 

**Collins, November 5, 10:05 AM**

 

He has been living with Roger for almost six months when Mark moves in, angry and bitterly, obsessively, destructively in love with truth. He has ambitions like Collins used to have (still does, sometimes, on his good days), and a low tolerance for days jobs, minimum wage, and night shifts. Roger is wary of him. They sit and eat burnt toast and black coffee in silence, and Collins wants to tell them just to fuck and get it over with, but he’s not sure how the suggestion would be taken, and so stays silent.

 

 

**Roger, February 21, 2:00 AM**

 

He stumbles in through the door, still shaken, still shaking, and the blood on his hands dried and rough. Mark is passed out on the floor. Roger can’t see anything, can barely see anything; there is only one flickering candle, and he searches his pockets and searches his pockets and he doesn’t have any matches. He feels sick.

 

 

**Collins, February 21, 12:08 AM**

 

On clear, cold, winter nights like these, when he can see all of the stars (those sharp bright points, the brightest white amid the deepest black), when his breath floats out in front of him in foggy, imperfect clouds, when shivers run down his back and legs—on winter nights like these, he wishes for the city. It isn’t far away, just a few hours, and he will back in the morning. But by then this night will be gone and he will not need the city like he needs it now. He wishes for the tall buildings, the cars on the roads, the street lights. 

 

He feels a hand on his shoulder and wishes he didn’t have to turn around.

 

 

**Mark, February 20, 11:58 PM**

 

He gathers the papers together without thought to their order, haphazard and confused, bent at the corners. And puts them on the table. And lines his three remaining candles in a row. He doesn’t go looking for the last of the coffee, not because there isn’t any, but because it will keep him awake and he does not want to be awake. The bottle he does find is three-quarters full.

 

He lies down on the couch, but soon he has slid to the floor, and he leans his head against the arm of the couch, and he closes and opens his eyes, again and again, and he wishes. He wishes he could remember all of his dreams.

 

 

**Collins, December 18, 9:48 PM**

 

He isn’t going to bitch about it, but he’s never liked holidays. It’s true. He’s not the only one. Roger slumps around the loft, plays harsh, angry chords, or weepy love songs when he forgets that Collins is listening. Mark packs. He grumbles as he packs and the answering machine picks up and his mother asks if he is still coming. He doesn’t call her back.

 

“If you hate it so much, just stay here,” Roger snaps at him.

 

Mark flips him off and says he’ll have to leave early tomorrow, if he wants to get there in time.

 

 

**Mark, February 21, 8:31 AM**

 

He doesn’t need a watch to know that it is too early to be awake. The sun is sharp and bright through the window: early morning sun, clear and light. His head is pounding. He doesn’t know where he put his glasses, has to reach around for them, finds them not far away on the floor. He feels ill but at least the depression of the previous night is gone, as strange now and as unreal as a nightmare after the sun has come up. At first, he thinks the loft is deserted, until he realizes that someone is running water in the bathroom.

 

He stumbles to his feet.

 

“Collins?” he calls out tentatively, but the sound of his own scratchy, croaking voice is painful, and he has to put a hand to his throbbing temple. Then he tries, “Roger?” just as weak.

 

No one answers.

 

 

**Roger, February 21, 2:30 AM**

 

His stomach settles only slowly, and even then, he is afraid to stand up. He rests his hands, flat, palms down, on the cool bathroom floor, leans his head back against the wall. If he looks to his right, he can see Mark in the next room, out so cold he has not woken even yet, completely and absolutely oblivious.

 

Roger wishes vaguely for Collins, but only in a half-hearted, unintentional way. He doesn’t want to be alone, but the only thing he can stand to be is alone.

 

Later, he will not remember how he spends the next hours, ghostlike and pale, wandering back and forth across the floor, staring out of windows and into dark corners, waiting. 

 

Once, he dares look into the mirror. He can’t stand the sight of himself. There is a splatter of blood on his shirt. He pulls it off, disgusted, but the action doesn’t help, and the cold is only worse now. He knows he will never feel warm again, will certainly never feel clean again, but he runs the hottest shower he can, anyway, and stands under the spray waiting to fall. The hot water runs out quickly, yet he stands there, still, no longer caring, no longer trying to care.

 

 

**Mark, February 21, 9:06 AM**

 

He remembers too late that there is no coffee left. The only thing there is, is old, stale cereal, not even any milk, so he crunches tiny handfuls as he counts the dust motes floating in the ray of sun. He does not notice Roger, does not notice the water shut off, the shuffling, uneasy footsteps across the room—does not acknowledge Roger’s presence at all until he sits down sullenly, pulling the sleeves of his sweatshirt harshly over his hands.

 

Mark pushes the bowl of cereal across to him. Roger pushes it back. It is now that Mark looks at him.

 

Roger’s skin is red; his eyes are bleary; he won’t look Mark in the face. He is shaking. 

 

Mark doesn’t ask what’s wrong, but he pushes the bowl in front of Roger again. Roger doesn’t push it away, but he doesn’t eat anything, either.

 

 

**Collins, February 28, 3:52 PM**

 

It didn’t work out. With the guy, but it never does. He’s not too sorry about it, but for a while, he spends half his time in his office at the university, and pretends the world begins and ends within the New York City limits.

 

He sees the changes in Roger. He’s not blind. He only thinks he knows enough to leave him alone, at least for now. And when Mark gets angry, starts to yell and throw his hands in the air and kick whatever there is nearby to kick, he tells him to stop. He tells him to calm down. He tells him that Roger will get over it soon.

 

Sometimes—now—he worries. He puts his hand on Roger’s shoulder, and Roger doesn’t even blink.

 

 

**Mark, February 26, 12:01 PM**

 

No one changes this quickly, this suddenly, this completely, and he knows it. He does not know what to do. Helplessness does not suit him. 

 

He hasn’t known Roger very long—not even a year—yet Mark still knows that he is living with the ghost of the boy—someone no longer real, no longer present. Roger doesn’t play guitar anymore, doesn’t sing, doesn’t write any songs. He never mentions the band, except once, to Mark’s question, to say that it is over.

 

Roger is pale all the time. Mark can hear him, at night, knows he does not sleep, sees him the next morning with dark smudges like charcoal underneath his eyes. He’s always fidgeting—rubbing at his eyes, pulling at his sleeves—but he never looks at anyone, only at walls and ceilings and floors.

 

It makes Mark sick, and he wants to hit something, hit someone, hit Roger even, as if this would help.

 

 

**Roger, February 23, 1:42 PM**

 

He is the only one in the loft when the telephone rings. He gets up, but doesn’t make any effort more, just stands several steps away and listens to the scratchy voice on the machine.

 

“Roger. It’s David. Didn’t see you yesterday and I—”

 

The voice stops, awkward and choked, and the forced, friendly tone collapses.

 

“Look, man, about what ha—what happened—”

 

Roger waits for an apology, but it never comes, only a silence that seems to stand for the words, and then a last, hurried message.

 

“It’s all right if you don’t want to come back for a while. We’re probably just—going to stop—for a while. I—see you.”

 

The machine clicks off.

 

Roger erases the message.

 

 

**Collins, March 1, 4:30 AM**

 

He can’t sleep, and he can’t even turn on the lights, because the power is out.

 

Roger is sitting at the table. He has lit one candle, and he is staring blankly at the flame. Collins walks toward him slowly, with a certain amount of caution, the source of which he cannot name, then sits down across from him, and asks if he is an insomniac too.

 

“Recently,” Roger answers. “If you haven’t noticed.”

 

Collins nods, and—“What’s going on with you? You’re not acting like yourself at all.”

 

Roger shrugs. “I don’t know,” he whispers. 

 

 

**Roger, March 1, 4:30 PM**

 

No one died.

 

That is the important thing, he tells himself, over and over, as if it mattered.

 

The police aren’t even pressing charges, too tangled up in terms like self-defense, too busy stumbling through the many crimes, the many faults, the many people that were there, weary and broken and deserving of blame.

 

There will be no court room, no jail cell, no handcuffs. There will be no funeral. There will be nothing but him, and the rewind, replay, rewind, replay, rewind, replay, of his mind.

 

 

**Mark, March 1, 10:50 AM**

 

His shift starts in 70 minutes, just in time for the lunch hour rush, and he doesn’t want to go, he dreads it, but not as much as he dreads this. Sitting on the couch, with Roger at the opposite end. This is a job, too, now, a job for which he does not have the patience, a job for which his anger is terribly misplaced.

 

Roger is sitting with his elbow leaning on the arm of the couch, his head leaning on his fist, his eyes staring ahead at the wall. Mark tries to move closer. He puts one hand gently on Roger’s shoulder, feels the muscles in his arm tense and sees Roger’s eyes shift quickly to him, then away.

 

“Can I…help any?” he asks.

 

Roger doesn’t say he doesn’t need any help. He just says, “No,” and shrugs away Mark’s hand.

 

Mark slouches and crosses his arms against his chest. “You’re a dick,” he says. “You know? You’ve barely spoken or even moved in a week, and it’s not like we’re doing anything to you. You have two friends, right here, who would kill for you, you know that, and—”

 

He tries to soften his tone, even reaches out his hand again, but the minute he touches Roger’s sleeve, Roger moves, practically pounces, and grabs Mark by the front of his shirt, face so close their noses are almost touching, eyes livid but awake, at least, alive.

 

“Who said we were friends?” Roger snaps, then lets Mark go and storms out of the loft.

 

 

**Roger, February 21, 12:08 AM**

 

Everything happens very quickly.

 

One minute he is on the floor and everyone is still and shocked and silent and then there is only movement, a world so dizzy and sick he is not even sure of the floor beneath his feet.

 

Someone calls the hospital.

 

They think Roger is bleeding, and he is so scared, so confused, that he himself does not know, and he rides in the ambulance next to the man whose blood he feels on his own hands.

 

In the clean, bright, white-walled hallways of the hospital, he gets lost in the shuffle, hides in a corner in a cheap plastic chair, out of the way. The police come, ask questions, have to ask some questions twice because Roger doesn’t hear them. They say they’ll want to talk to him again. He knows he has nothing more to tell them, nothing more to say. The hospital lets him go when he proves he is unhurt, and he wanders the dark streets, still hazy, until he finds himself again outside the door of the loft.

 

 

**Mark, March 1, 5:15 PM**

 

He pauses outside the door and doesn’t know why. But something tells him—inexplicable, sudden—just to turn around and walk away. He doesn’t.

 

At first, it seems like the loft is empty. He wonders if Roger has gone out. He feels, at this thought, an odd and overpowering sense of happiness, of peace, and he remembers Roger after one of his shows, the only show Mark ever went to see, smiling like he wanted every single tooth to show, still humming the last chorus, excited and proud, so proud, like Mark has never been proud in his life.

 

Then he hears movement on the other side of the curtain to Roger’s room.

 

“Roger—?”

 

There is confusion first, disgust second, and through it all a fear as pervasive as his short-lived hope. Roger is bent, he is shaking, he is sweating, there is a belt around his arm and a needle in his hand and Mark swears, he swears, he didn’t know, he couldn’t know, and he can’t do anything but yell stop, and know Roger will not stop, and watch Roger, who does not stop.

 

 

**Collins, March 16, 6:36 PM**

 

He realizes, not in one sudden moment of revelation, but slowly, over the course of several long, stretching days, what has happened, what has changed. Outside, the temperature moves slowly upward, the trees in the park become green, and flowers start to open. And inside, a change just as slow and just as steady and just as, he thinks, he has thought from the start, inevitable, occurs.

 

It is the way Roger looks at his watch when Mark is at the restaurant. It is Mark’s arm resting against Roger’s arm at breakfast. It is the whine in Roger’s voice when he tells Mark his mother called. It is Mark’s tone when he yells at Roger to return Dave’s messages, to get the band back together again.

 

Collins knows what has changed, but he pretends, as he imagines is their wish, that he is still in the dark.

 

 

**Mark, March 1, 5:38 PM**

 

He doesn’t make it past the stairs. He stops on the top step of the second flight and sinks down to the floor, the cement cold and filthy beneath him, and closes his eyes.

 

Roger finds him there. For several moments, he stands, halfway down the first flight, just staring, and Mark sits, right where he was, dumb to Roger’s presence.

 

Then Roger sits down next to him, and he opens his eyes again. He asks, quiet and shaky and accusing, “Is that what’s been wrong? Is that why you’ve been so different?”

 

“No. No, no, that’s not it,” he keeps shaking his head and twisting his fingers together and just fidgeting, all over. Mark can’t stand to look at him.

 

“Then what? Fuck, Roger, just tell me. You’re so—I don’t know, I was going to say changed but maybe not. Maybe this is who you always were. Maybe I never knew you at all. Maybe—”

 

“No,” Roger says again. “You did know me. You—you do.”

 

Mark wants to start yelling again, at this, already feels the anger building in him like it might take him over, but Roger won’t let him say a word. Roger just grabs him, rough and overwhelming, and pulls him close, and kisses him, and Mark knows now that he is angry, too.

 

“Tell me,” Mark whispers.

 

Roger’s eyes are horrible to see so close.

 

He nods and says, “Okay,” and drags Mark up and back to the loft.

 

 

**Roger, February 20, 11:58 PM**

 

He doesn’t know it, but he picked the right girl. He leans against her, leaning against the wall in the back. She is smoke: tastes like smoke, feels like smoke. At first, she laughs, and he hates her laugh, but soon even that sound is gone.

 

Dave picked the wrong girl.

 

There is a shout.

 

 

**Mark, March 1, 5:44 PM**

 

He wants to know the truth, he does, but first, but now, he wants Roger, all by himself, without baggage, without history, without whatever fear will come from this truth, without whatever fear is already destroying him.

 

They fall over the arm of the couch, awkward and tangled, the door not even closed behind them, and the ice on the sidewalks outside beginning to crack and thaw.

 

 

**Roger, February 20, 11:59 PM**

 

He understands the situation only later: Dave, a pretty girl, her boyfriend, who is jealous, who is violent, who is mad.

 

But at first he only sees the man, the knife, and Dave, cowering and shaking, the one who shouted; everyone at the bar is still.

 

The girl tries to hold him back, grips at his shoulders with her red painted nails, but he does not listen to her.

 

 

**Mark, March 1, 5:52 PM**

 

He has never been as close to anyone before like he is close to Roger now. Those girls, his past, never needed him like Roger needs him. He must need Roger, too, he thinks. Not in the same way, but he must, he must, he has to, he knows it.

 

 

**Roger, February 21, 12:05 AM**

 

Again, a blur, which he will not be able to recall even a few hours later, which he will try for many hours to recall.

 

The man is surprised, and in his surprise, Dave gets away. Then there is only Roger, and the knife he does not even realize, anymore, is held by a person at all, and a struggle of a few minutes, and then the knife in Roger’s hands.

 

The other man is drunk, and Roger is still here, still sober enough to know that he will not be able to stop himself after the knife starts its descent.

 

Later, the police will say it was self-defense. The girl will say it was fuckin’ brilliant heroism. But Roger will not hear her. And Dave will have to call and tell him, several times, that the guy isn’t dead, that the charges were dropped, that the whole thing is over.

 

Roger will not believe him.

 

 

**Mark, March 1, 7:15 PM**

 

It’s over, the story told.

 

Roger’s eyes are closed and he sighs, but doesn’t say anything more. Mark realizes his arms are around him, tightens his grip, waits for the right sort of words to come to him, sees that there aren’t any.

 

He wants to say it is all right, but that’s not true.

 

“I’m here,” he says finally. “I don’t know what kind of help that is, but I’m here.”

 

“No,” Roger says, and lets out one long, rattling breath. “You don’t know what kind of help that is.”

 

Mark thinks he sees him smile, for a second, as a passing shade of the darkening night falls across his face.


End file.
